The Data Center Your Neighbors Actually Want
What if the most hated building in American land use became the anchor of the local food system?
Last week, at POLITICO's California Agenda summit in Sacramento, OpenAI's vice president for global policy, Ann O'Leary, said something you rarely hear from inside the AI industry:
"If you think about the amazing work we're trying to do with AI … it's all incredible, and it's inspiring. But when you have a data center in your backyard, it's not inspiring you. And so I think we have real work to do."
She's right. And the candor matters, because the industry's usual posture – community benefit agreements, tax revenue talking points, a ribbon cutting – hasn't moved the needle. Data center opposition is now one of the few genuinely bipartisan movements in American local politics. Moratoria, zoning fights, and referenda are stacking up from Long Island to Northern Virginia to Tucson.
Here's the...
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